Forster and Four Letter Words

I started A Passage to India a couple of weeks ago, expecting to once again fall in love with E.M. Forster's witty prose. And I'm not going to lie...I'm feeling a little let down by this book.

The basic concept of the novel is to explore the relationship between the British and the Indians during the Imperial occupation of India (according to the intro, Forster spent so many years writing it that it can't be specifically dated to a year). The book jacket tips you off that there will be an incident involving a young Indian doctor and an Englishwoman, and it will deal with the repercussions following. Duly noted.

Here's my beef: when you are dealing with two different cultures, I think there are a HUGE number of incidents you could pick from where there is a legitimate misunderstanding between two people because of their own background and familiar practices (some perfect examples here). But so far, that isn't what's happened in A Passage to India.

Warning - spoilers ahead!

Dr. Aziz puts together an outing to the Marabar Caves for the young English girl Adela and her future mother-in-law Mrs. Moore. While exploring the caves, Mrs. Moore tires and decides to rest, leaving Adela to go on with Aziz and a guide. Aziz and Adela explore separate caves, then reunite with the larger group and head back into town. Upon their arrival, Aziz finds himself under arrest for allegedly assaulting Adela in one of the caves. In the novel, I'm now getting into the nitty gritty of he said, she said and characters taking sides in what's become an Indians vs. British conflict.



Thus far there isn't reason to believe that Adela is lying, although she may have accused the wrong man. And truly, if I was in a pitch black cave with some stranger grabbing at me, I would flip out too!

Obviously I haven't finished reading yet, so the reasoning for this specific intercultural conflict might not be apparent. It just seems that an irrational hullabaloo about touching one of "our women" doesn't really explore the specific tensions of British occupied India - you could interchange any number of racial/ethnic groups and likely end up with the same type of storyline (unfortunately). Remember in Gone with the Wind A Passage to India when Scarlett Adela gets attacked and then the men all round up and go on a Klan raid conduct a farce of trial? See.

Sidenote: My literary disappointment is in no way meant to demean the emotions of women who are attacked by men of any color, shape, religious background, or political affliation. The stories I'm referencing aren't about the experiences of the women - they are about the social response by uninvolved parties to the incident

I guess all this is to say that I expected something more unique from my dear Morgan (I have discovered his friends called him Morgan, so I'm going with that for now). "I think that most Indians, like most English people, are shits, and I am not interested whether they sympathize with one another or not" (Intro).  Oh. That leaves me wondering...what happened to "Only connect!" from Howard's End?

Perhaps we are only supposed to connect with non-sh*ts? Or maybe the universal nature of the novel's conflict shows that humanity needs to work on becoming something that's best described without using four letter words?

Image from A Passage to India film found here.

Only connect!

So it would probably be a useful exercise for me to post more frequently here so I don't have to cram so many thoughts into one small space, but I get too involved in the story and forget to write. Oops.

I thoroughly enjoyed Howard's End. Even though dear old Eddie pulled the "I'm including characters to represent lofty ideas" ruse, I didn't find that as bothersome or obvious as I have in other works (*cough* The Jungle *cough* Lady Chatterley's Lover). The Schlegels, representing liberal intellectualism, unite with the Wilcoxes, conservative, practical businesspeople, through the marriage of Margaret Schlegel and Henry Wilcox.

And let's be honest here, if I wasn't imagining Henry Wilcox as Anthony Hopkins, I would think he was pretty much a giant jerk. Sometimes even the imagined Hopkins charm couldn't salvage his remarks. Upon learning he'd caused Leonard Bast to lose his job, Henry's response was pretty much "There will always be poor people. Not my problem!" And some of the terribly chauvinistic remarks he would make to Margaret made me seriously question how someone as awesomely smart, practical, and loving as Meg could have fallen for a guy who is more or less an arse. Women's expectations were a lot lower in 1910? I wanted to like Henry because Margaret loved him so much, but never could quite make myself do it.


.

But she crossed out "I do understand"; it struck a ... false note. Henry could not bear to be understood. She also crossed out, "It is everything or nothing." Henry would resent so strong a grasp of the situation. She must not comment; comment is unfeminine. (28.3)

Through a series of events too complicated to relay in their entirety here (but including such juicy tidbits as a former mistress, an unexpected pregnancy, and a possible murder), everything works out in the end. Meg's mantra of "Only connect!" not only helps her love all the very different personalities in her new family, it indeed helps Henry and her sister Helen learn how to better love and "connect" with others. Forster leaves us with the idea that the different English classes will soon intermingle and learn to respect one another. As I am not British, I can't really say whether I think his prediction came to pass, but it's certainly an optimistic way to end the novel. And if there's anything I really treasure on this list, it's an optimistic ending. Trust me, there are plenty of dire endings to balance this one out. And bonus - Meg gets Howard's End after all!

I'm really excited to watch the movie some time this week to see how it compares to the novel, as this seems to be one of only a handful of cases where the book and the movie receive favorable reviews.

Want to read Howard's End yourself? Download the ebook from Project Gutenberg here.

Bonus question - what do you think is the best movie adaptation of a novel? What's the worst?


Anthony Hopkins image found here

More Howard's End Love!

Just spotted this on Design*Sponge today. Enjoy!

A Little E.M. Forster Love

I'm a third of the way into Howard's End, and I admit that I've been remiss in posting about it. Mostly because I just get school girl giddy when I'm reading me some Forster, and I wonder if anyone would find it interesting to read my gushing over his way with words. I love - dare I say luuuuurv? - how this man puts together his sentences!


I heart you and your funny moustache, Eddie.

One sticking point of this project is that the novels are predominantly...well...sad/angry/life-is-so-crushingly-depressing type stories. It's super refreshing for me when I actually get to read a novel that's happy or even (gasp!) funny! And though I don't know how Howard's End (which, by the way, is a house) will end, I love Forster's dry humour so much that I'm going to start spelling like a Brit. And there's a movie adaptation with Tony Hopkins and Emma Thompson?


I think I'm in Heaven. Even if he is clearly too old for her.

Now on to the story. Thus far we are following the Wilcox family, the Schlegel family, and a poor gentleman named Leonard Bast (whose name I love because my friend Sarah always wanted to name a cat Leonard). Mrs. Wilcox has just died and left a handwritten note that her home, Howard's End, is to be left to the oldest Schlegel girl Margaret, whom she recently befriended. Of course, the Wilcoxes aren't having this, and they tear up the note and throw it into the fire. Ouch!

Does anyone else feel like they'd have a much more serious moral dilemma about discarding their mom/wife's last wishes? Of course, being put out of your own house isn't much of a proposition either.

In any case, Margaret doesn't know about Mrs. Wilcox's last wish, and now several years have passed. I'm pretty sure it will come up again, because that's how stories like this work, right? In the meantime, Helen, the younger Schlegel sister, has just had an interesting run in with a strange visitor who seems to have lost her husband. And I will leave you with a brief excerpt of the incident, just to show that really it is funny and not sad, despite the plot description so far!

"Now, Helen, what did really happen?"

"What I say. I was, as it were, orating my speech. Annie opens the door like a fool, and shows a female straight in on me, with my mouth open. Then we began--very civilly. 'I want my husband, what I have reason to believe is here.' No--how unjust one is. She said 'whom,' not 'what.' She got it perfectly. So I said, 'Name, please?' and she said, 'Lan, Miss,' and there we were.

"Lan?"

"Lan or Len. We were not nice about our vowels. Lanoline. "

"But what an extraordinary--"

"I said, 'My good Mrs. Lanoline, we have some grave misunderstanding here. Beautiful as I am, my modesty is even more remarkable than my beauty, and never, never has Mr. Lanoline rested his eyes on mine.'"



Howard's End photo found here.